


Where we really want to go

by musicforswimming



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Het, Minor Canonical Character(s), Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-19
Updated: 2009-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie was still a realist, it was just that what was real included a little more now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where we really want to go

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt-collection meme on LJ; [austen](http://austen.livejournal.com) gave me "Cassie/Wood, I am armed with the past". Title from Springsteen's "Born To Run".

Things seemed to Cassie like they were one extreme or the other in this world; boredom and the slow, steady rhythms of the road or horror and adrenaline. There were nights that wound themselves around her, heat insinuating itself into every space skin or limbs make, and there were nights when the cold seemed like it would tear her apart. There wasn't much of the in-between seasons once she got started: leave a beautiful spring day to go north and it was still winter; leave a pleasant fall day to go south and it was the height of summer.

Cassie never much cared for winter anyway. The first winter on the road was the hardest -- winters in Ohio had been bad, but at least at school she could hide out in her dorm, seek refuge with her friends in the coffee shop on campus, curl up with Dean --

The thought wasn't one she stayed on much the first year. It made her angry, like he brought this into her life that day they broke up, unfair though she knew that was. He certainly didn't make her buy her truck and drive away from Cape Girardeau. But she salted and burned her first body in Illinois in December, had to take off her gloves to do it and her hands were nearly frozen solid by the time she dropped a match in without its being blown out in the process, and then she went back to her room and sat in the shower until the hot water ran out without managing to get warm. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, all she could think was that it was too damn early in the day to be so dark.

In March, she ended up back home, visiting Mom, and things were starting to look green, and she was sort of shocked to realize that she'd made it through the winter.  
   
   
   
   
The second winter, she found herself in Ohio again, Cleveland this time, and she met him at a bar, when she overheard him asking a waitress the same questions she'd had.

When she sat down, said "So, what are you thinking, some kind of fairy?" he didn't even blink, just raised an eyebrow at her and flagged the waitress down again.

Cassie ordered a beer, he asked for one too, and as soon as the waitress was gone, said "Nain Rouge, actually."

"No," she told him immediately. "That's Detroit, and I'm fairly certain it's only the one; the stories are unique enough that I don't think they're elsewhere."

"You from the Council?" he asked. "Slayer?"

"Hunter." The surprise was all over his face, and she had to laugh at it. "What?"

"You don't seem the type, that's all." But he was grinning at her too, and that went a long way, because his smile was a wonder to behold.

"I just started a couple of years ago -- " and his face changed all of a sudden, his smile getting smaller, his eyes softer.

"What happened?"

The beers arrived then, and she was grateful for hers, glad to have something to distract her from him for the moment. "My father," she finally said, and then blurted out after, "but it was more than that. A friend -- he helped me with what happened, took care of it -- but everything was different, you know?"

"My mother." He seemed grateful for his own beer, then. Neither of them had to specify, of course, give anything more than the nouns (and their possessive modifiers, of course). It was the understanding of this world, the thing that went without saying; if she met Dean all over again he wouldn't need to tell her. "I know. The world's a whole lot bigger afterwards, isn't it?" And then, "Robin."

"Cassie."

That was a place for them to go from there, a place that didn't keep them both in the Land of Awful Histories. It would all come out eventually, but without the awkward weight of new acquaintance. Running into a gang of vampires on the way back to her car helped a great deal, too: first of all, common Hunter understanding was that vampires were extinct, and second of all, he fought real well.

Plus there was the nice adrenaline kick it gave both of them, and by the time they got to her truck it wasn't so much a matter of them casually arriving there as his getting slammed against it because she couldn't keep her mouth off of him.  
   
   
   
   
Cleveland in the summer -- oh, yeah, that was the dream. But the Council building was nice, and it had air conditioning and a refrigerator, two things she could never be sure of anymore. The past year, she'd started to break herself of the lifelong need to sleep with _something_ covering her, even if it was only a sheet, but she won't say no to these sheets, soft cotton of a thread count that, like the makeup in the bathroom and the iPods scattered around the safehouse and the Brita pitcher in said refrigerator, jarred with the paramilitary operation he and his were running. It seemed a shame not to get all the use out of these sheets that she could, seemed a shame that they were as likely as not to fall asleep in the open air, because the sheets stuck after they'd worked themselves into a sweat.

They had a family here, after a fashion. She noticed it every time she visited, that for all that he was their commander, Robin was also father and guidance counselor and cool uncle and big brother, depending on which of the young women in his charge he was dealing with. She thought about that a lot.

She thought about it, and then a few days later she'd get in her truck and be on her way again, because one of his psychics picked up something in Pennsylvania (Wisconsin, Missouri, New Jersey) and it wasn't big enough for the Slayers to go in full force and she ought to get going anyway.  
   
   
   
   
He asked her, once, if she thought she'd like to stick around on a more long-term basis. It was during the few days of autumn she had that year, what with zigzagging up and down throughout the winter months. Asked her over breakfast if she thought about settling down at all, again -- "Oh, not necessarily with me," he specified, and she guessed her eyes had gone about as big as it felt like they had. "I mean, of the eight months we've been dating, we've really only spent, what, a month together total? Just in general, I mean. Going back to your writing?"

"I can write anywhere," she heard herself say, and realized it was true, and pursued him a little harder to find out just what he'd meant by not with him.

"I mean you're a Hunter, Cassie, and I'm a realist," he said, and her first instinct was to laugh, because good _God_, who did he think he was talking to here?

"Nothing," she said, waving off his look as she giggled into her hand. "Nothing, Robin, nothing. Just -- reminded me of something."

Then she kissed him, the taste of coffee still bitter in his mouth, pulled him upstairs and on top of her on the bed. Fall blazed outside, but three days later she was in Georgia, where it was still mostly green, and she was working too hard on putting together this damned case to do much besides send him anything new she came across for the database his people were working on (the Council having previously neglected much outside of European folklore).

From Georgia, it was back to Louisiana to see Mom again, and from there, it was Kansas, and the weather got colder and the days got darker. Cassie decided, when she crawled the truck to the side of the road just before a whiteout left her utterly blind, that it wasn't anything particularly deep or metaphorical, she just hated winter in general.  
   
   
   
   
May, unseasonably warm, and he asked her again. They could use someone to help them rebuild their knowledge bases, someone to replace those dusty old tomes that were blown up in '02 with articles written in simple, modern English. "I'm not saying tomorrow," he said. "I'm just saying..."

"Maybe," she said, and kissed him before she left. It was a good kiss, a solid kiss, both of them with feet planted firmly on the ground and his hands hot on her waist even through her clothes. And then she got in her car and left it at 'maybe', because 'real' had redefined itself a lot over the past couple of years, and the road was as real as the places at the end of it, and Cassie was nothing if not realistic.


End file.
